In a significant legal ruling, Google has been instructed to pay a hefty fine of £2.4 billion (approximately Rs 21,790 crore) to a UK couple.
Shivaun and Adam Raff, the founders of the price comparison website 'Foundem,' launched their service in 2006.
They noticed that their site experienced a substantial drop in search visibility for key terms like "price comparison" and "shopping" soon after going live.
In a significant legal ruling, Google has been instructed to pay a hefty fine of £2.4 billion (approximately Rs 21,790 crore) for abusing its dominant position in the market with its shopping comparison service. This decision comes from the European Court of Justice after a protracted legal battle that spanned 15 years, initiated by a UK couple whose website faced a sharp decline in visibility on Google’s search platform.
Shivaun and Adam Raff, the founders of the price comparison website ‘Foundem,’ launched their service in 2006. They noticed that their site experienced a substantial drop in search visibility for key terms like “price comparison” and “shopping” soon after going live. Initially, they believed this decline was a temporary error. “We just assumed we had to escalate to the right place and it would be overturned,” Shivaun said, according to BBC.
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Despite reaching out multiple times to Google in hopes of resolving the issue, their requests were ignored. Frustrated and left with no alternative, the Raffs decided to take their complaint to the European Commission in 2010. Following a lengthy antitrust investigation, the Commission found that Google had been unfairly favouring its own shopping service over competitors like Foundem. In 2017, they imposed a substantial fine of 2.4 billion pounds.
However, Google was not ready to accept the ruling and appealed the decision, leading to another lengthy series of legal disputes. In 2024, the European Court of Justice finally upheld the original fine, dismissing Google’s appeals.
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“We’ve both been brought up maybe under the delusion that we can make a difference, and we really don’t like bullies,” said Shivaun.
Meanwhile, Google responded to the court’s decision by asserting that the fine relates to practices that were corrected back in 2017. A spokesperson for the company stated, “The changes we made in 2017 to comply with the European Commission’s Shopping decision have worked successfully for more than seven years, generating billions of clicks for more than 800 comparison shopping services.”
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Ayushi Jain
Tech news writer by day, BGMI player by night. Combining my passion for tech and gaming to bring you the latest in both worlds. View Full Profile
